Delta Air Lines is suing Marriott over its Delta Hotels brand, arguing that the hotel giant was trying to “hijack” its brand and good will when it purchased the Canadian hotel group and expanded it significantly. Is there any merit to this, or…? Thanks to View from the Wing for flagging this story.
But when you look at the actual branding, you’ll see the logo is typically written in three lines, with “Delta” in the first row, “Hotels” in the second row, and “Marriott” in the third row, after a horizontal line. That horizontal line does seem to almost separate Delta Hotels a bit from Marriott, so perhaps an updated logo wouldn’t be unreasonable.
Bottom line
Delta Air Lines is suing Marriott over its Delta Hotels brand, arguing that the company is “hijacking” its brand and good will. The thing is, Delta Hotels has been around since the 1960s and was founded in Canada, so clearly it wasn’t initially inspired by the airline.
However, the argument seems to be that when Marriott acquired the brand in 2015, it decided to expand it to the United States, and that was at least partly motivated by Delta Air Lines’ premium image. I have to imagine that Delta wants to be able to use the “Delta Hotels” branding for its hotel booking platform, given that this is becoming an increasingly big business for airlines.
It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this…
What do you make of this Delta Air Lines lawsuit about Delta Hotels?